Blank Check with Griffin & David - Romancing the Stone with Adam Kempenaar & Josh Larsen

Episode Date: September 20, 2020

How did Robert Zemeckis go from commercial flops to a career-defining time-travelling trilogy of blank checks? It’s all thanks to his “guarantor” from 1984 - Romancing The Stone, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. We invited Filmspotting’s Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen to dive into Zemeckis’ first commercial success and how it set the tone for a decade of hits. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch @ shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

What did you do? Wake up this morning and say, Today I'm gonna ruin a podcast it's great man's life that's great that's the line the lines of man's life i feel like i always struggle with douglas i rarely try it i feel like i i every time i go it can't be that hard i just clench my jaw right and i'll sound like michael douglas doesn't work i i there i definitely do not have a douglas i would not know where to begin with a douglas no i get to is he cnn or what he's one of the news channels now right he's not cnn surely isn't cnn james earl jones or did they change it nbc nightly knows i think really he

is you're right i had no idea yes michael douglas is the voice of the nbc nightly news all right yeah cool it's just weird because every time they will start a nbc news broadcast uh you know previously with that bastion of honesty and integrity brian williams it'd be very weird to have it introed by the man who was most known for being a horned up sleazebag in 90s erotic thrillers guys i can't stop i'm michael douglas welcome to the news is this one of his most like ostensibly charming like you know leading man roles and even in this he's kind of scummy kind of kind of scummy that's what's wild about this is like this was sort of his breakthrough as a movie

star he's playing like a charming cad and then after this he just becomes like the the american id of the 80s and 90s he just becomes like everyone's like coked up nightmare of like what if i just gave in to all of my worst desires I forgot the American president where he's playing like a very idealized and like lovely figure. I forgot that he does. That's the other big exception. Yeah. Right.

He does eventually start to do sweeter, but like, yeah. He's kind of planting the seeds here though, isn't he? I mean, totally first into Kathleen Turner's crotch is kind of, you know,

planting a flag. This feels like him figuring it out he's like go further more of this sleep i was way too tame wall street uh black rain wore the roses basic instinct falling down disclosure that's like his run after this right like american president is him being like i gotta take my foot off the gas like you know come on yes because after this he just is like i know exactly who i am as a movie star and I'm going to ride this all the way to the bank. And America was like, we love it.

Despite the fact that he almost always plays someone unlikable. It's he has a wild career. And we talked about this when we did Basic Instinct, but he's he's kind of anomalous in a bunch of ways. But we'll we'll dig into this more. I feel like there's a lot of interesting career context in this movie which is one of the things we like to talk about because we are hashtag the two friends we are connoisseurs of context and this is a podcast called blank

check with griffin and david i'm griffin i'm david and i love it i love it david i frankly love it you love romancing the stone or you love the podcast? Oh, the podcast. I love that you're David. I'm being positive. I love that you're David. That's great. I love that you love that I'm David.

I love that you're Griffin. Well, that means the world to me. And this is a mini series. It's a podcast. I'm sorry. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers, giving a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

Sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce. Baby. It's a miniseries on the films of Robert Zemeckis. It's called Podcast Away, despite many people begging for it to be called Podcasting, Podmancing the Cast. That's the thing that people wanted. Okay. I mean, no.

Podcast Away is what it's called you didn't hear how well it rolled off my tongue pod mancing the cast yeah get out of here people want to hear that for 22 consecutive weeks um but this is this is kind of what we like to call the guarantor sometimes you get a movie in a career that gives them the turnkey that lets them do what they want to do and this is like a guarantor and then he follows this up with like a double guarantor that essentially leaves him open to make whatever he wants for the rest of time i mean zemeckis is in this rarefied air i feel like we've covered a couple other people like this cameron lucas spielberg nolan where it's like what? You get to make whatever you want for the rest of time. You did it enough times that you can have seven flops in a row and we'll still

go like, but what if this one's another Back to the Future? Like every time Hollywood's like, but it might be. It might be. Yeah, maybe he should like adapt the documentary about the mentally ill guy with the soldier figurines. And that'll be a Christmas hit. What an incredible thing to look forward to. But joining us on the show, this is very exciting. We have two friends who also host a movie podcast. Hey. Hey, guys.

What, am I seeing double here? Six male friend movie podcast hosts Hey. Hey guys. What am I seeing double here? Six male friend movie podcast hosts? No. It's only four. It's only four. Ladies and gentlemen, joining us from the Film Spotting podcast, the long running legendary Film Spotting podcast, Adam Kampiner, Josh Larson, live from Chicago. How are you guys doing? Doing great. Thanks for having us on. This will be fun. I'm really looking forward to this. I was saying to Adam when we were recording earlier today, we made it through Tenet.

We made it through, I'm thinking of Ending Things. And then I got to sit down after both of those and just enjoy Romancing the Stone. So, came at just the right time. Romancing the Stone is a breezier watch than either of those movies for sure. Slightly. Yeah. I'll say this.

We do, and this is, I'll say this. I'll say this about me saying I'll say this. I say I'll say this too much. But here's the thing

I want to say. We do a March Madness competition every year that I will admit fully ripped off from you guys. That was the idea of just like,

oh, you can do March Madness with things that aren't sports. And the way that you guys did it and involved your fan base, how excited people got over it, inspired me. I went to David. I said, here's my idea. We do that, but we add the stakes of whoever wins our March Madness competition, we cover. whoever wins our march madness competition we cover so it's like we're handing too much control over to our listeners um and saying like here's 32 directors in a bracket you pick who we're going to cover a couple months from now and zemeckis is the guy who was picked uh in march when the world was going upside down when no one knew how long this was going to last if it was

just going to be two weeks staying at home i I'm pretty grateful that Zemeckis won. Like, looking back at some of the other people who were on the bracket, some of them might be a slog to talk about now in an alternate reality, you know? Yeah. And much like you guys talking about, like, watching or ranting the stone being a nice light thing,

I did feel that appreciation when I was watching this the other night of, like, I'm glad this is what I have to watch. Yeah, it was fun. I wish I was doing this the other night of like, I'm glad this is what I have to watch. Yeah, it was fun. I wish I was doing this deep dive that you guys are doing because he's someone I instinctually defend, but I haven't gone back and rewatched a lot of stuff beyond the things I watched a million times as a kid. So a lot of my affection for him is born out of my childhood experience with him. And that carried over even to things like What Lies Bene lies beneath which i think i love more than almost anyone um but i don't know if a lot of that stuff would hold up on a revisit so yeah listening along will be fun and i'll be a little bit jealous that you guys

get to do this yeah i mean well three movies in i'll say so far so good for for bobby z obviously so far so good for for bobby z obviously he comes out of the gate strong right we haven't gotten to the difficult movies yet but like you know i want to hold your hand to use cars like these are not movies people watch a lot these are not movies that are in the public lexicon and i had a great time with both of them uh yeah have either of you guys re-watched either of those films at any point in the last 10 years or so very sadly both are blind spots for me i have a lot of zemeckis blind spots i really do so maybe maybe i should just get off the zoom right now i was similar to you i was similar to you yeah i i hadn't seen either i think maybe i saw used cars sort of like half watched it on cable i want to hold your hand. I'd certainly never seen. And they're both such wonderful movies.

Yeah, I've got about five Zemeckis blind spots and those are two of them. So, yeah, for me, it started with Romancing the Stone, probably at the time of its release. You know, I probably did see that in theaters when it first came out. And, you know, we'll get into it, I'm sure. But given my love already at that time for Raiders and Indiana Jones in general, I was all on board. And then, you know, as you were saying, David, to then do Back to the Future and, you know, to make a masterpiece at that point is it just it was great for me at that age when I saw it then. And then that's one that just holds up. Absolutely.

I saw there was a quote from a Paul Schrader interview that was circulating on Twitter the other night about this idea that like critics will buy stock in a filmmaker. Like when they feel like they sort of discovered someone, when a director, a young director has their turnkey movie and it feels like, oh, I'm calling it now. This is a filmmaker who's going to stick around, that they sort of buy stock in that person. And then for the rest of your life,

you're sort of trying to defend your purchase of that stock. So when they have a hit that everyone agrees upon, you're just like, I'm in the money. Let me laugh all the way to the bank. And when they don't, you really got to try to like fight your hardest to find, well, but if you look at it through this prism, it's interesting and this and that. And Zemeckis, I think is very much one of those guys where like he was so undeniably strong at the beginning that I don't think it's exclusive to you guys. I feel like we feel this way. I feel like a lot of people feel this way. And it's one of the reasons why he keeps on getting the chance to make whatever he wants is people are just like, there has to be

like that same guy still there who can bat at that level, right? Yeah, you don't want to give up on them. And I think that happens a couple of ways. It happens nostalgically. So that's the Zemeckis case for me, right? But it can also happen, Adam, I think, I don't know if you have this, but I feel like sometimes I have this with our Golden Brick winners. So an award we give every year is to an up-and-coming filmmaker who's made maybe their second film, unknown to us, but we're just really impressed with the emerging talent. And so we'll give them this award and then we're buying stock, right? So it's very hard. Every film that that filmmaker makes going forward, and this has been an award, how many years now, Adam? 12, 13? I mean, it was within the first couple of years of this show.

So a lot of these early winners, I feel like we still have stock in and you're rooting. Are we rooting for them a little bit extra when they have a new film? Absolutely. Absolutely. I'll admit it. Right. And the namesake of that award on your show is Brick and Rian Johnson, who totally panned out in the way that you guys like sort of called he would, you know? Yeah.

But yeah, it doesn't work out that way every time you want them to sort of constantly be there and if if someone like zemeckis comes out of the gate and like pretty much the first like six or seven are all really strong it's hard to ever totally divest yourself of that stock you will the other he he i mean we'll talk about this as we go forward but like if you're a spielberg or whatever like spielberg shifts from like being the you know the reinventing genre movies into blockbuster movies into like turning into a prestige director hunting for an oscar into like sort of the post schindler's list stuff that we covered where it's like you know more darker tinged movies like you know like he shifts like i feel like zemeckis

struggled with the shift post forrest gump well i mean and i like a lot of those movies post forrest gump i do too but yeah but like he it does kind of feel like the the oscar broke him in a weird way i don't know the shifts are weird and it's also this thing we've talked about where he's this weird case and jonathan demi who we covered last year as our march madness winner is another case of this where it's like a guy who has this major massive cultural defining blockbuster box office hit that also sweeps the oscars is seen as the most oscary. They get pegged as an Oscar-y director, and they literally never get an Oscar nomination ever again.

You know, it's like, Zemeckis' Oscar career is pretty much done after Forrest Gump, even though I feel like he's thought of an Oscar-y filmmaker, and every time he has a new movie, people question that. But he's also not really making major box office plays, blockbuster plays in the way that he used to. It doesn't feel like he's trying to be as populist as he used to. He is in kind of a weird space in the second half of his career. Where do you guys think, maybe you'll get into this, but where do you feel he stands right now when people talk about i suppose bankable directors but also great directors because he's a name that i i don't feel like comes up a whole lot and in fact josh referenced the new charlie kaufman movie i'm thinking of ending things which if you've seen it

have you guys talked about this at all how it we well i don't think we've ever seen the movie yet it it does have a zemeckis zinger this movie but apparently that was run by zemeckis yeah interesting yeah right no kidding it's a total shot is how i took it it's hard not to see it that way which if he was on board with it then the guy's got a great sense of humor. Yeah. Right. Respect to Zemeckis for agreeing to be razzed. I think Kaufman was originally going to work with him. I think Chaos Walking was originally a Zemeckis project and Kaufman wrote at least an early, you know, he worked on that movie. And so maybe that's part of it.

They had some connection, but it's interesting because in the movie he's kind of being mocked as a what you're talking about griffin an oscary guy yeah like whatever a maker of formulaic hollywood pap which like that's not really romantic comedy hack yeah which is not really what Zemeckis is now. Now Zemeckis, it's sort of like, he's this guy who takes a lot of money from studios to make very strange passion projects that are presented commercially, but are clearly uncommercial, you know, like, you know, the, the walk allied, welcome to Marwen. I mean,

allied is a little more conventional, but you know what I mean? It's conventional for a movie from the 1950s. Like, it's conventional in a near pastiche-y kind of way, which I love Allied, and we will get to that episode in which you and I fight about Allied. But, like, Allied's the most conventional of those three, and yet it's very, I think, pointedly trying to, like, represent a very out-of of vogue style of film.

Yeah. That's him being like, hey, Hollywood, why don't you make this kind of movie? Everything he's done, you know, really almost since what cast away when you hear even the idea, maybe not flight, but you kind of cock your head a little bit. It's like, what? Zemeckis is doing that? Yeah. But it's got those people in that style. Yeah, Beowulf, Polar Express.

Right. When he does flight, you're like, is there something else with this movie? Because this almost seems too conventional for him. A little straightforward. You're telling me he just kind of made a movie with a movie star that's pretty good and is going to get some Oscar nominations? I don't understand like what did zemeckis see in this no it's also like flight is even more bizarre because it comes out of 10 years of him committing himself exclusively to one technical breakthrough essentially, that's the other bizarre thing with him

where it's just like, at not his peak, but at a very high point in his career coming off of What Lies Beneath and Castaway, which are both big hits, he just doubles down and goes like, here's a big shift. I'm only about motion capture.

And I feel like in those days was talking as if he might only make motion capture movies for the rest of his career. I mean, it felt like when Flight was announced, not only did it seem like a weird match for him in terms of material, but it also was like, oh, wow, he's actually going to make a live action movie again. Yeah. And not only that, but it's an R-rated movie, which he's only done one other time in his entire career. He's odd. Is What Lies Bene beneath pg-13 did he sneak that i think it is i believe used cars and flight are the only two r-rated movies he's ever

it is it is what lies beneath is the closest where you're like that's barely a pg-13 that's sort of like on the line yeah well and he, and he's because he's doing Hitchcock there, right? So I don't think he'd want to go graphic because it's all the insinuation. Yeah, totally. But I mean, to get back to your question, Adam, I feel like he was, you guys have talked about this on your show many times, show many times but but the sort of weird um tale on the cultural response to forrest gump and how wildly that has changed you know over the years and i feel like uh the perception of that movie becomes more and more negative every passing year and and and then it gets sort of associated with like oh people who like forrest Gump, that's treacle,

that's comfort food. That's for like saps and sentimentalists, you know, the kind of like dismissive way that the coffin movie might frame him. Um, so it's like, that's his biggest movie at box office, his Oscar winner,

all of that. He still has that shine when he's making his next couple of films, contact what lies beneath cast away. But I feel like shortly after that, when he's going his next couple of films, Contact What Lies Beneath, Castaway. But I feel like shortly after that, when he's going into motion capture land, maybe more heightened circles of film criticism and appreciation are starting to really sour on him retroactively. I think in a way that also happened to Spielberg, where it's just like, oh, Spielberg, it's all the pap, it's all the this, it's small c, it's whatever. And he moves into this really weird area. I don't feel like there was a lot of excitement around him when he started doing live action again. And he felt like the kind

of guy where we were like coin toss onto whether we should even include him on a March Madness bracket, whether or not he'd have any supporters. And it was very bizarre as we watched the arc of voting over the weeks that he was being treated like he was this like outsider pick. Like people were really into him because our previous two winners were Nancy Meyers and Jonathan Demme, who were both big filmmakers, but slightly off from the types of filmmakers we cover. We hadn't covered someone

who worked that much in romantic comedies before at that sort of studio level. Demi is so eccentric in what he does, his career is so spread out. And Zemeckis was being treated the same kind of way when we'd see people tweeting about him and i think marwin is almost the one that shifted it not in a positive way but people were just like there's so much weird stuff going on with this movie that maybe it's time we reckon with robert zemeckis again because it's very clear this guy is never boring even when he's bad he's never boring he's at such a high level of technical proficiency and it you still totally can't figure out what's going on in his head he well he hasn't gotten stale he's he's somewhat been forgotten this it's weird he's been forgotten despite the fact that he hasn't really gotten

stale but it's almost like his weirdness has and i I haven't seen all of those. I didn't even see Welcome to Marwen. I think the last one I saw was Allied, which for the record, I liked quite a bit. But yeah, now it's kind of like we've just set him aside. He's too weird, but not in an artistically interesting way. I think it has to do with the technology. You know, he's too invested in the technology. That scene still as in a separate category than artistry even though it shouldn't be and so he's just not it's it's like we don't

really have to wrestle with him he's a boomer like he's the this is the forrest gump thing right it's like he got tagged as like king boomer and it's it's funny to think about uh obviously because something like welcome to marwin it's not like you can watch that and be like oh these boomers always you know they're always foot fetishists who have like action figure communities that play out psychodramas in their head you guys got to get welcome to marwin as you really i really josh you must be well recommend welcome to marwin it is it is a movie to reckon with it is unlike anything else seeing the doc isn't enough i can't just claim that i've seen the doc doc's one of my favorite movies the last 20 years it's not enough you must

be welcome yes uh welcome to marvin is a whole other thing yes don't you think that part of it is and i think i'm guilty of it. Josh would probably admit he's guilty of it. We probably don't see him through a no tourist lens, right? No. Because of that technical proficiency, because of the way he works in so many different styles, unlike so many other filmmakers, a Christopher Nolan would certainly be one. We see those movies. we see all the recurring themes and motifs and stylistic choices, and right or wrong, we think we know who Christopher Nolan is. We think we have some sense of him as a human being and as an artist. And I have no idea

what Robert Zemeckis really cares about or what keeps him awake at night from the movies I've seen. Now I probably have not done, I'll admit I've not done a deep enough dive, but I think he doesn't easily fit into that sort of a tourist package. And so we do overlook him. I agree with that. I was about to say he stopped writing, but he does still write like he's credited on Darwinwin on the walk on the christmas carol like

you know he does still have screenwriting credits obviously he stops writing with gail who that was so key to his sensibility at the beginning but i do think yes he's not seen as notorious but he's also not seen as like an anonymous craftsman i agree with you that i think there's something kind of inscrutable about him even though there are things like his boomer tendencies his obsession with technology there are things you can latch on to but you don't feel like you can totally get him in the same way that nolan despite being a guy who doesn't volunteer a lot of information about his personal life you watch those movies and you're like i know everything going on in this guy's head.

He's not telling me this, but he keeps on coming back to the same four or five things over and over again. They're so clear. His sensibilities are so unified. His movies look the same. They sound the same. They have the same fears. And the zagging of Zemeckis is odd, but then he also doesn't feel like this kind of just journeyman. He doesn't feel like he's just sort of anonymously latching on to whatever, you know, is thrown in front of him. He's kind of a contradiction in that sense. And this movie is interesting because this is his least personal film, certainly in the first half of his career. Right. This is a job.

Yeah. Right. To back up and give a little context, which we set up a lot of this in the last two episodes, but he and Bob Gale were the wunderkinds out of film school. Spielberg meets them when he goes as a lecturing guest speaker for Sugarland Express. So they meet Spielberg right before he becomes Spielberg. They get in at just the right time. He likes their energy and their enthusiasm. They have similar reference bases. He kind of takes them under his wing. Then he makes Jaws. And now he's the hottest guy in Hollywood. And he says to everyone, these two guys are the next big thing. They're a writing team. This one's the director. I'm putting my money on them. So he is responsible for getting their first two movies off the ground. I want to hold your hand and used cars. And both of them flop. They're both well-reviewed. They're well-liked at studios.

They have a good reputation, but the movies are flops. And they're sort of in a like two strikes bottom of the ninth situation. And their big passion project, which they had been working on for a long time, was Back to the Future. They'd just been honing that script, refining it, refining it, tightening it, wanting to make it. And Spielberg says, I think this is a great script. I'll produce this. I'll try to get this set up for you guys tomorrow. And Zemeckis says to him, I mean, really a career-defining move. It shows a lot of foresight for someone who I think was 28 at the time. That was the other thing. He made his first film when he was like 23. He had had this sort of, between those two films he directed in 1941,

which Spielberg directed, but he and Gale wrote and was a big flop. People were like, these are just Spielberg's cronies. And Zemeckis said, I think if you produce another film of mine and it flops, I'm done. I'm completely cooked. I will never be able to shake the reputation that I'm just your friend who's getting movies made because his buddy is the most successful guy in Hollywood. I need to do something on my own. I can't do Back to the Future. I can't risk it with one of my personal projects. The next halfway decent script I find I'm taking because I just need to get something that like a studio is confident about with good people attached and just make it as cleanly as possible and try to

get a hit so I can plant my own two legs as a filmmaker on the ground. And that script was Cocoon. He spends two years developing Cocoon. And very shortly, I think in the later stages of pre-production, they welched. They went like i don't know this guy's got two flops in a row maybe not he started pushing back with exacting notes on certain things and they just dropped him and they hired ron howard who seemed like safer and more controllable so now he's like really down in the dumps he gets the romancing the stone script and he goes yeah sure and as much as he sort of he explains it if his as if it was that sort of thoughtless that he was like i read it it was good i said yes i i wasn't looking for something to really

speak to me i just need a script that felt like this is workable i know how to do this i'll go make this i'll get it in on time and under budget and hopefully i'll have a hit which will help me make back to the future and it's such a classic hollywood story like diane thomas but she's like a waitress she writes the script it's her first script her agent sells it like immediately every studio immediately is like we're we we want this like we have a pair in mind you know like it was it was like just so simple and there's's some weird apocryphal possibly story that she like pitched the story to Michael Douglas when he was a customer once,

but maybe that's made up, right? I was watching the special features, which are not super thorough, but there's some good interviews with Douglas in particular because he was a producer on this too. He was so responsible for willing this movie into existence. He didn't mention anything like that. He made it seem like it was just the hot script around town

that everyone was being sent and that everyone was bidding on. And he paid the most for it. I believe he bought it from her for $250,000, which at the time was far and away the most anyone had ever gotten for a first screenplay. And everyone treated him like he was a lunatic for spending that much. So I guess that all makes me wonder, you know, I don't think this is a great Zemeckis film. And I wonder if that's because it's really a Diane Thomas film. And you can sense some of that

tension, but there's almost two movies going on here a little bit. And whatever is personal in Romancing the Stone, I feel like comes from Thomas. Yeah, I think that's right. You know, I looked up, I wasn't that familiar with her. So actually reading a little bit about her, I found a Douglas quote. I think this was in the L.A. Times. He said there was a total lack of fear to the writing. That's one of the things that attracted him to the screenplay, at least. And yeah, so she studied marketing at USC. She went on to study acting. Like you guys said, this is her first script. And it's got a great conceit to it. You know, this romance author who gets to live out one of her plots. It's got a lot of nice lines in it. I love the early one with a lot of people get sick in department stores, you know, just kind of throw away character lines like that. And Thomas's story is, you know, is really tragic because she was killed in 85 in a drunk driving accident that her boyfriend was behind the wheel so i think at that time she had even speaking of spielberg gone under contract um with amblin so i just uh she

wrote always i mean did she get the final credit on that she she did not she did not okay she was she was adapting uh she was working always she also supposedly wrote this sort of famed unknown indiana jones script that was set in a haunted house that always like apparently spielberg was not into but does sound kind of fun like yeah that sounds so bad that um so yeah so obviously yes like she her talent was so you you know, obvious in turn, especially in terms of like writing this kind of 80s movie. That's like, you know, let's take a classic genre for like a slightly sexier, sexier, more grown up spin.

Like it totally makes sense that Spielberg was like, yep, come to the ambulance table. Like we're going to, we're going to do movies together. Yeah. Cause she knows the reference points, right? She knows all the influences that would, that would, you know, turn on the light bulbs for those guys. But I almost, I mean, we obviously are going to talk about this as a Zemeckis picture and I think it is in some ways, but to me, it's like the question is, is this a woman's picture?

You know, is this, and by that, I mean, uh, it's got a female protagonist. It's largely about concerns that traditionally wouldn't apply to men. It's angled, I think, almost more toward a female audience. I mean, again, as a, what, 11, 12-year-old, I ate it up. But I think Romance of the Stone is really unique as this sort of subterranean women's picture in Indiana Jones clothing. women's picture in Indiana Jones clothing. I agree. I think she is ultimately the author of this. I think this movie benefits from him saying like, I'm just here to serve this material because no one has been buying what I'm selling and everyone seems to like this script. So I'm just going to deliver this the best way that I can. And it's just him like all hands on deck. What, let me show all my tricks tricks all my smarts just in service of this material rather than trying to put my own fingerprints on it um have you guys seen jewel of the nile yes not since i was a kid so i remember buying a 45 you guys remember i don't

know if you were around griffin when they had the, you used to put on your record player of Billy Ocean, When the Going Gets Tough, the theme song from Jewel of the Nile. I assume that I watched Jewel of the Nile. I have no recollection of it. None. But I loved Romancing the Stones so much that I can't imagine, and especially loving the hit song from the soundtrack, I can't imagine I didn't watch it.

I watched them back to back. I watched them two consecutive nights. I had not seen either before. I'd probably seen pieces of Romancing the Stone, but I'd not seen them full. I'd certainly never seen any of Jewel of the Nile. Jewel of the Nile really, really makes Romancing the Stone look good in a lot of ways.

And sort of around what we're talking about, it's like Jewel of the denial is uh making an immediate sequel i mean it comes out like a year and a half after the first one it comes out the next calendar year and uh you remove zemeckis and thomas from the equation and you realize what those two are contributing in their respective fields. And that very much doesn't feel like a woman's picture anymore. It does not feel like a female-led film anymore. And it's just sloppy. And you're missing the heart of, I think, Diane Thomas's genuine sort of insight and and respect for these characters and you're missing the zip of zemeckis just knowing how to construct these sort of rube goldberg machine sequences so beautifully and also just tone and energy and pace it's not a good movie

it's hard to be effortless and it's also hard to recognize the whatever the skill that went into making something feel pretty effortless like romancing the stone is a convoluted movie like you know like if you if you sort of say the plot out loud it sounds absolutely ridiculous it's like and then they go to you know meet these scary like gangsters but it turns out they love her book like you know all that but like in romancing the stone it always you're just sort of like yeah i get it i'm fully in the river with this movie i'm like locked into the energy of this movie but that's yeah it's a sort of a weird trick to pull or it's a tough trick that's that's spielberg and that's zemeckis i think i was undervaluing it on that exact line. And I know you guys,

I had heard you when we knew we were going to do Zemeckis and we also knew we were going to be locked down for a while. So we're reaching out to people in different cities about guesting via Zoom. I emailed you guys and I had remembered you guys talking about Romancing the Stone over the years on the show that both of you had cited as like a movie you watched a lot when you were young. And I feel like generationally, it was one of those movies like Midnight Run that like really kind of exploded on home video and on cable. Like I reading as much as I could about these two movies the last couple of days, I see so much of people framing it as like it was a big hit when it came out. and then like by two years later

it was viewed as something of a modern classic just because it's a perfect kind of movie if that's on you're going to sit down and watch the rest of it if you have it on vhs it's an easy rewatch and much like midnight run which i remember the first time i saw it having that same thing of like that's that's it like this movie's good but people are like religious about this i now watch midnight run once a year i think it's one of the most perfect movies ever made it's it? Like, this movie's good, but people are, like, religious about this. I now watch Midnight Realm once a year. I think it's one of the most perfect movies ever made. Its value unfolds the more you watch it and the more you compare it to the movies that break a sweat trying to do the same thing and coming up short. Yeah, that all checks out for me. I don't remember, unlike you, Josh, I don't remember seeing this in the theater.

Doesn't mean I don't remember, unlike you, Josh, I don't remember seeing this in the theater. Doesn't mean I didn't. It probably would have come to my small little Iowa town with my one screen movie theater. But I remember it being on all the time, like on HBO or Cinemax, whatever. We had both movie channels. It was on all the time. And I feel like I watched it all the time. My dad watched it all the time, which it is odd. You think about it now, it doesn't check out as the type of movie that necessarily a 10 or 11-year-old boy would have been really obsessed with. Yes, it does as an adventure picture, and that element is there. But you're right, especially on this rewatch. And I don't think I've seen the movie since probably 85, 86.

This was the first time in that long. I did not remember just how much the movie was absolutely Kathleen Turner's movie and absolutely this romantic comedy. But I do think even then as a, you know, a grade school kid, I was, I wasn't just drawn to the, the kind of swash buckling aspect of it, but it was the connection between Turner and Douglas. They did have something on screen together. Yeah. That's undeniably.

Right? Yeah. And that's enough. You know, it doesn't matter what your gender is, what kind of movies you like or you don't like, whether something seems sappy or not. There was a chemistry that made them really fun to watch on screen. And that was certainly, I know I bought into it. And that was certainly, I know I bought into it. Well, I think with Turner too, you know, if you, and I talked about this when we've discussed Raiders, Adam, if you really gravitated towards Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark and, you know, recognize that this was a very different portrait than the damsel in distress adventure movies usually give you, absolutely, you're going to also resonate with Kathleen Turner here, not because she's like that the whole way, but because you see, you almost see her becoming Karen

Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark, right? As this movie progresses. So there's that entry point. And I just think for me at that age, you know, this brought Indiana Jones one step closer to me in terms of reality, because Raiders is taking place in the past, right? It's all over in another country, but then we watch this and it starts in New York City. You know, it's with like someone who's, yeah, a best-selling author, but still like relatively normal compared to the characters you get in Raiders.

And I was like, oh. Her life is boring. Like despite the fact that she has a big career yeah that's the brilliant entry point of this movie i mean it's like how close yeah how close could this adventure be to me to a boring person it's a lot closer so and i i was also surprised watching it for the first time how much the douglas character jack colton isn't this kind of stock archetype dr jones character that he is very much like somewhat a guy playing the role you know yes he's he's kind of 80 full of shit which i like right both of these characters this movie fundamentally is about these people sort of

coming up on middle age feeling kind of unfulfilled in their lives even though they're ostensibly doing what they want to be doing yeah and i i think like even if you feel like well that's a weird thing for 11 year old boys to relate to so strongly on hbo i do think in a way that no one could have anticipated, it works in a way you're saying, Josh, which is, well, the fact that their lives are boring and that they don't totally fit in this environment makes it easier for me to relate to them than Indiana Jones, who I just know I'm never going to be that cool. I'm never going to be that smart. I'm never going to be that effortless. Well, just like us, Kathleen Turner's life is all about the fantasy. I mean, it's the movie we see at the beginning of the film, right? It's this movie that she's concocted in her head and that she is

putting to paper. That's something maybe we couldn't have done or necessarily seen ourselves doing, but we're just like her in terms of watching those types of stories play out and wanting to insert ourselves into them, just like Indiana Jones. And the fantasy of romancing the stone is if it could happen to her, maybe it could happen to me. Like maybe I'd have a relative who goes to Columbia and needs my help. I could get a phone call as a husband who's chopped up. Yeah. I mean, I'm swinging across a ravine. I mean, it's A leads to B. It is. I like that her, that the, of opening sequences is a hornier indiana jones though right like that i do like that like you say what like the the the gaze here is a little

different right like you know the the what we're sort of perceiving like indiana jones those movies are not chased but they they're they're more like boys adventures well and here's where we here's where we get into zemeckis i think you know dropping the ball a little bit and working against the script that's been given him because there's there is a lot of leering here right a lot of leering of turner there's a lot of turner's legs and that is you know whatever you make of it independently in this context in the context of the story that Diane Thomas wants to tell, that's out of place. And you could say maybe it's being set up to be turned on its head later when she does start to make her own steps, you know, which I think

happens in the scene at the ravine when he tells her to get behind him and she doesn't, she goes to the bridge, the rope bridge, right? Things start to turn there but before that we get a pretty leery camera here um and it's um yeah it's different than indiana jones but i i do think there are times where it's butting heads with what the script wants for joan wilder she kind of fought with zemeckis right like i mean obviously kevling turner was sort of like a famously big personality like but like it does sound like Zemeckis was like kind of trying to force her into those kinds of like you know sort of splashy poses and you know what what you're talking about like you know she was sort of like this I want to play a human being over here and zemeckis he he thinks in terms of iconography so much so did he want her to play the woman in the opening fantasy sequence the western i think he wanted to get there more i mean obviously the

comedy and the the the tension of the movie comes from her slowly becoming you you know, easing into this other role. Yeah. I think he, I mean, the quotes I read from her were her saying, like, he literally would just tell me to stand in ways that no human being can stand. He is so obsessed with images. He thinks so much visually and the brilliance of, oh my God, and what if this comes into frame and this and that? Well, is there some Jessica Rabbit going on here too?

Well, it sounded like a little bit. It's the Hitchcock critique too, right? Seeing actors as cattle, right? Right. To some degree, I think perhaps between working with her, you know, with all of her difficulties and working with Douglas,

who was both a producer and an actor, I think this might've been the movie that kind of broke him in to actually knowing how to direct actors. Because I don't hear that complaint later in his career. But here she's like, I really had to fight him a lot and explain to him, like, it doesn't make sense for me to stand like this.

It doesn't matter if the shot looks good. And if I'm standing like this, it's impossible for me to act. Like, it's impossible for me to get the emotions across if I'm doing like this, it's impossible for me to act. Like it's impossible for me to get the emotions across. If I'm doing this incredibly unnatural position, just because for you, it like is a fun reference to some sort of cheesecake pose or whatever. Well,

and also you got to remember like her filmography at this point is just body heat and the man with two brains, basically like that's it. Like she's still so new. And obviously in body heat she had landed as this you know this like sex symbol of the 80s she's like that's such a crazy star making performance so like i i don't i mean she's so good in this movie like sorry in that way yeah in that way though you know coming off of those, I think it is interesting that he did also at the same time, while maybe trying to pose her in those ways, allow her to lean so heavily into the comic aspects of this role.

You know, especially when you think about the opening part of the film and she's playing, you know, ditzy. She's, you know, these aren't even now, these aren't attributes I associate with Kathleen Turner, right? No. We think of her as strong and sturdy and in charge. Low status. Yeah, and she's ditzy and dippy. And Zemeckis creates the situations for that to be the main characteristic. So I think that works.

And yeah, I think she does. Turner makes this movie because it sounds like you guys are maybe a little higher on Douglas than I am. I think if we like Jack Colton at all, and it's debatable how much we're supposed to, it's only because of Turner. I mean, she makes him interesting. It is all about Jones' reactions for me, not what Douglas is necessarily delivering. I think he's good. I like him. Yeah, I like Michael Douglas.

I do Michael Douglas. I do too. It's odd because it feels like this is the one performance of his that doesn't feel totally Michael Douglas-y, where he's channeling something kind of different, and then by Jewel of the Nile, he's fully Gordon Gekko mode. He no longer works in an adventure setting.

Something happened across those 15 months where suddenly he just like he got more coke in his system he went to more parties whatever it was you just can't buy him as like a rugged outdoorsman he's so sort of yuppie-ish but um can we can we agree he shouldn't be dancing that the dancing is just i mean it's worse than kevin bacon and footloose wow see come on now cut the mic just cut the mic that was for adam david loves to put bacon on the dish it's one of his favorite things i love me a side of bacon but no i like i like him in this but i like him because he's scummy like i that that's what i kind of you know sort of, that's what I kind of, you know, sort of that, that's what separates this movie. What helps separate this movie?

Because if, you know, if you look at the poster, right. If you look, you know, you're like, oh, well, yeah, this is literally just Indiana Jones. And, uh, and it's, it's sort of delightfully not Indiana Jones. Everyone in it is out for themselves, at least initially. Like the MacGuffin is sort of this useless thing like that all of the stakes of this movie are weirdly low i know her sister's in trouble like i i do know that there is something that needs to be done but like like everyone in this movie is basically like after nothing in particular, like the final showdown is great, but they're all they're all just like blundering idiots. Well, what what they're after.

I mean, the goal, the stakes are her independence. Right. And it's kind of like her embrace of that. That's a great independence. And I will give those stakes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He pulls off, you know, what's the line at the end? Something about, you know, you've always been you'll be all right, yeah. He pulls off, you know, what's the line at the end? Something about, you know, you've always been you'll be all right, Joan. You always were, you know, and I don't know if that is an Ann Thomas line, but Douglas pulls it off. And I think that's kind of that's the journey that we want to follow. And that's what, you know, at least watching it now as an adult, you're most invested in. Yeah, I would just say I'm going to defend Douglas, too. I mean, there's there's a

there's a ruggedness to him. There's a caddish quality. It's the same thing that that drew a 10 year old me, a younger me, even to Han Solo. I mean, of course, it's there to Indiana Jones, too. But there is there is a vulnerability. There is something to Douglas that suggests he's always a little bit in conflict and in crisis that you don't get with Harrison Ford. He's also a little sad and unfulfilled. Yeah, I know. I see in the plane where they talk about how he got to his sort of birding life. And it's just sort of like, well, I don't know. I want to do something exciting, you know, like i never really found my thing right he kind of just cut corners until he found like

that's that's exactly right like his big dream is that he would buy a boat like that's that's the top of the mountain to him like that that's as far as he can think that's where the movie starts right she wants a man he wants a boat he wants a boat right do they both become something more than that right she gets a man on a boat i do want to say that you bring up the the leeryness of the camera um and we see it in douglas right directly i mean the best shot in this movie is one where you know like her dress is her is torn and you see that long kathleen turner leg and then they cut to a shot of him, like a medium shot.

And he actually like licks his lips while he walks and is looking at her. Like it is pretty disturbing. But what struck me about it, especially based on the beginning, and I think this gets at what you were suggesting about the schism here between it being a Zemeckis film

and a Diane Thomas screenplay and maybe some competition there is what we should actually be seeing. What I feel like we should be seeing is instead Joan Wilder leering at Jack Colton. Absolutely. It should be right. That's what this movie really should be. That's what the movie actually sets up to be. Yeah. She's leering at the posters. She's leering at the poster, which is, I mean, let's face it, it's almost like, well, and I read something just before we started taping that suggests they shot that after they'd shot the rest of the film and

screened it, that opening, to fill in some story about her. But all that did was also throw out the balance a little bit because they set her up as so mousy, as so in need of fulfillment, of fantasy fulfillment. The opening is so good. Yeah, it really is. I was so immediately hooked. Yeah, as so in need of fulfillment, of fantasy fulfillment. The opening is so good.

Yeah, it really is. I was so immediately hooked. Yeah, and so much that's her performance. It's so good that then, yes, Josh, the actual trajectory of this movie is her realizing sort of her full independence as a woman, realizing that she can take these kind of risks. She can be the type of character that's in one of her stories. take these kind of risks. She can be the type of character that's in one of her stories. And that does to some extent involve, you know, holding out for the man that she thinks she deserves. And what's odd to me is that we see that poster in her apartment that is very clearly supposed to mimic or be a silhouette of the guy we meet later. And yet when we meet him for the first time, there's no sense, there's no sense there's

no Zemeckis doesn't really give us the moment where Joan Wilder looks at him and goes, wow, it's him. Yeah. It's maybe the boots, maybe when she sees the boots, but then once, once like he's revealed in full, the fantasy is shattered, right? Because of how he treats her and how he, how he talks to her. Yeah. Um, yeah.. But but where is that? Where is that split in her that she's drawn to him physically, that she's that he does, even if he isn't the Boy Scout that she seems to want on some level, as she describes how he should be trustworthy and honest and nice and all those things. He still is is physically the ideal. Right. That she's that she's built up. and yet we don't really sense that in her that's the thing i like about douglas in this movie is like unlike someone like harrison ford who always just deep down seems like a good guy you know even at something like han solo you're like i know he cares he's telling me he doesn't but i know he cares there's something so inherently scummy about douglas that he cannot beat out of his system and the fact that he is so modern that

he is not this kind of classical romantic novel hero that he doesn't feel like a classical adventure hero that he's playing the part well but in a way that feels a little empty, you know, and that that he is so immediately kind of a turnoff to her. I do think the movie should acknowledge he is a very conventionally attractive and charismatic person at this point in time. But you also understand why she would be completely put off by his aura, not just the way he's dismissive of her, but the fact that he's not, you know, very elegant. You know, there's nothing very poetic about him. You know, he's got this like gross sort of a stench to him. about her coming to terms with the fact that she writes these very idealized people in these very idealized circumstances with very neat endings where love conquers all and you can find the absolute perfect man. And there is no such thing like this might be her dream guy, but her dream

guy isn't a dream. He's he's a complicated person who has a lot of very irritating and unsavory qualities. Yeah, I mean, there has to be some suspense to whether or not he actually is going to show at the end. Right. And if we if we buy into him too much as this idealized man, as a man of virtue, then there really is no suspense there at all. And with Douglas, there's actual suspense. It's great that when they're on both sides, other sides of the river, opposite sides of the river, you know, that's just a great, that's where that all is set up. And visually, you know, how Zemeckis stages that. And that really, you know, that puts the emotional stakes at the forefront.

I think also the scene at the plane we were talking about in the downed plane, that's where she does start to turn and see possibilities in him. But it's interesting. It's not because he has fulfilled her vision, the book cover guy. It's because exactly what one of you were talking about, he's talking about his failures, you know, and the ways that he feels inadequate. Then it's that it's a little bit of vulnerability that, you know, trumps the scuzziness, I guess, for her. And she starts to see him as a possibility. Talking about the sort of leering qualities and how maybe the gaze might be misdirected in this movie.

There's the third author of this film we have to talk about as such, which is Douglas. You know, there's the Zemeckis movie, which is let me do a skill piece. Let me showcase all of my directing bravura. There's Diane Thomas, who has actual things she wants to say. This is a personal movie. Douglas said that she very much was like this character, that she had this kind of energy, that this very much felt like, you know, a fancy fulfillment of her internal life writing the screenplay. And then Douglas was the third major creative force in this movie and was a very hands on producer. The first thing you see in this movie is just giant letters,

a Michael Douglas production. Yeah. Right. I mean, he was an Oscar winning producer. He was the thing. Yeah. So is this a bid?

This isn't a bid for prestige because he's got that. Right. So what is this a bid for? Just made just mainstream success. To be a leading man. I mean, that's the weird thing. Right.

Yes. Because like in the seventies, he was on the streets of san francisco right he was like tipped for this leading man status obviously he's hollywood royalty and then it doesn't work out you know like when you see him in like the china syndrome which is another one he produced and he's good in that movie but he's like kind of like playing a shaggy hippie type like you know he seems almost scared of like this kind of a role like the lead role like yeah exactly and it's it's funny but right this is and devito is like an old butt of his right like devito's in one floor of the cuckoo's nest they've known each other forever so can i fill in a couple gaps here from the interviews i watched for sure for sure devito

was his roommate out of drama school they were living together in new york and both like man i wonder if i'll ever get to be a star and devito was like you're kirk douglas's son i'm 411 and you're kirk douglas's son i don't know if we're going to go for the same arc here. Right. But DeVito does Martin Bress' short film, which got a lot of attention. And that sort of put him into circles. He was mostly Broadway, off-Broadway actor. And then Douglas gets cast on Streets of San Francisco. DeVito said, the thing that proved me that he was a good guy was once he got cast on Streets of San Francisco, he kept paying our rent in new york so devito lived alone but only had to pay half the rent while he was working off broadway for years um but yes like douglas one floor of the cuckoo's nest was the rights were purchased by kirk douglas originally right who then realized he was too old

to play the character and then gave them to michael i i think uh well yeah you're right on the first one i thought that it was kind of that michael kind of fired him but you're correct that he was too old he had done it on stage is that right i mean it had been produced on stage devito was in it on stage like a lot of i think the cast was from but yes like i i forget if it's that michael douglas had the balls to fire his dad or his dad knew you know he couldn't do it but i but that that's sort of the narrative i think he did and he was actually you know a very hands-on producer in that movie i think he briefly tried to get it made with himself and no one would

go for it he talked about the fact that despite him playing a very conventional leading man on a hit network TV show and being the son of a legend and being a handsome, charismatic guy, there was very much still the TV ghetto at that point where it was very hard to cross the bridge from being a TV star, which was seen as kind of light entertainment to being a movie star. And so people didn't want to put him in movies. He started producing largely to try to get vehicles made for himself. And by and large, people wouldn't finance those movies if he was in them. So one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

He's not in. He produces it anyway. He wins the Oscar. That gives him a lot more clout as a producer. So then he does China Syndrome. China Syndrome, he puts himself in as the third lead. And as David said, he's kind of the one of the three leads

who doesn't really hit. The other two guys get nominations. They're already legends. It makes them only more popular. He's pretty good. He's fine in it. But as you said, he's not using his fastball,

which is... Right. This is cinema's greatest adulterer. This is a cad. This is the guy you can't help but root for, even though he's only sort of representing our basest instincts, our most basic instincts, if you will. And so this was sort of the same thing where at this point he's feeling a little defeated. Maybe I can't make it as a star. Maybe I'm more of a producer, you know, acquires this script, doesn't want to play the part, goes out to a bunch of other people. Everyone turns it down.

People say to him, why aren't you playing this? You bought the script. You know, you have a production company. You spent $250,000 for the script. Why wouldn't you play this? And he went, oh, you're right. It's a good part. I now have the cachet to get myself cast. I'll just do it. And this is the thing that finally made him a star. And, you know, much like Kathleen Turner, the rest of the 80s for her are incredible. And then in the 90s, she sort of hits a wall. And Douglas, it's like everything after this is a hit. Like he has a run for the next 15 years after this movie. Yeah, he doesn't look back, for sure. It just solidifies it. So for him, I think he went into it mostly as a producer.

I want to make a hit. I want to further bolster my career as someone who can get movies made. And I think he only took the lead role out of, you know, a little bit of selfish interest in getting to play something good that no one would cast him in otherwise. But mostly, I think, as a functionary of, I know I can do this, and I just want quality control over the film, I'll get it made. I think after this, he starts producing a lot less, and his persona is defined. But they talk so much about the fact that he's the one who acquired the script, not a studio. He brought it to Fox. He's the one who hired Zemeckis, even though the last two films

were flops because he thought he was a good director. I think everyone was kind of answering to him to a degree. And it sounds like he was very much the one managing the tension between Kathleen Turner and Zemeckis and everybody. He was sort of mediating everything. And I think the times where the movie gets misaligned in terms of objectifying her rather than objectifying him, I kind of feel like it's his influence. I feel like it's the Michael Douglas that fully comes to what Zemeckis goes on to do, you're going to point to him about the leering, for sure. That makes a lot of sense. But it's a very canny choice for him to take on this role in retrospect. And maybe it's the way he plays it. Maybe it's the way the character is in the script.

But as we've said already, this isn't the straightforward Indiana Jones. He is a little sleazier, but he also is willing to be deflated, right? And so you think of the moment where he jumps in the car, he's going to hotwire it because he knows how to hotwire a car. And what does she say? Try the key. She's like, just use the keys. So already it's kind of like he's kind of a boob in that moment. And yet at the same time, there are many instances of deflation. He's really canny in the climax because she saves herself from the guy who gets his hand chomped off by the alligator. She's left to fight him one-on-one and saves herself. But we see that Douglas makes the choice to save her, to try and save her rather than go after the jewel.

So he gets the moral credit, right? Right. Eventually, he blows it a couple of times and then figures it out, right? Yeah, in that moment, by letting the alligator go, he gets the moral credit. Yet she gets the credit for saving herself. And then when he catches up to her, he gets that moment I talked about where he affirms her independence. So it's like, you don't need me. You don't need a man. And so it's a really canny way to position himself as, yeah, kind of a sleazy guy, but at the end, also kind of an upright guy.

And that probably got him some cachet in terms of what he could be cast in moving forward. If I can float a theory, I think there's like, there's something, especially if you're thinking in 1980, what is this? 84, 83,

84. Like he looks so much like Kirk Douglas, like, and like, there's a whole generation now that probably doesn't, you know, more than a generation, two generations,

probably they don't even think about that. But at the time when he's popping up on screen you're still you're not that far from kirk douglas's superstardom so like it's it kind of cuts both ways like he you know when he shows up you're like well there's michael that's a movie star face but i think what works about this role for him and what is helping him is that he's like yeah but i'm kind of a schmuck like he's kind of acknowledging like look i'm the kid like i'm the one who's still figuring it out and that's maybe what makes this endearing in in a way that the other stuff hadn't been he's got to own it he's got to earn his own way i mean that's kind of like you know i'm going to earn my own way in

this movie as this character just as i'm trying to earn my own way in this movie as this character, just as I'm trying to earn my own way in Hollywood. Right. And he's able to sort of like, he's in a very, very lucky position where he has at his disposal, the ability to essentially parody his genealogy and his legacy. Like his very presence in a movie is mocking a kind of model of classical male movie stardom. Because like Kirk Douglas was Mr. Prestige, Mr. Epic, you know, this amazing like masculine movie star like profile. He was tough and scary. He played bastards like he played like kind of, you know, he was kind of the dark star of his time. Right. Like he played like kind of, you know, he was kind of the dark star of his time.

Right. And I feel like before this, Michael Douglas is trying to be like a conventionally likable movie star, a conventionally sympathetic leading man. And this movie gives him the gift of realizing, oh, people like it when I'm kind of a shit. Like people weirdly root for me i just always think about this story it was in some like you know hollywood in the 80s documentary or whatever but talking about uh sitting next some some studio executive or filmmakers talk about sitting next to michael douglas at a screening of fatal attraction and there's like uh you know a scene where he's with gun close and then he leaves and then he goes and gets in bed with his real wife in a very short period of time. And whoever it was just turns to him at the screening and goes, it's unbelievable.

Like they just saw you cheating on your wife and the audience is with you. You could feel it in the audience that they were just like, how, why are they rooting for you? Like this person turned to him and said this at a test screening. why are they rooting for you? Like this person turned to him and said this at a test screening, but he does just have that weird magic where I understand if your dad was like Spartacus, you might have the vanity of saying, I don't want to be that kind of anti-hero. I don't want to be a scumbag. I don't want to be weak. You know, I don't want to be pathetic. But then this movie within a comedic context shows how innately well he plays there in that zone. And I think he just runs with it this, that's an aspirational type of character. I mean, the idea and the whole point of the film is right. Bud Fox thinks he can become Gordon Gecko. And then the question is, what

compromises are you willing to make? Do you really want to be him? But all those other characters that have been mentioned, I mean, fatal attraction disclosure isn't the whole point that we go, action disclosure isn't the whole point that we go, okay, that could be us. I could maybe be, if I was maybe just a little bit as good looking as him and whatever. Could I get away with it? Could I get away with it? Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's the seedy thing that he taps into in our psychology. And I think for women, it was like, I know I shouldn't't but there's something appealing about this guy like there's just that weird dangerous edge to him that this movie uses really well i think it

accidentally like isolates his key movie star quality for him um but but you know he talks so much about all the decisions he was making weren't made in sort of movie star vanity they were in in the vanity of, I want to have a hit movie. I want to hit Michael Douglas production. That's what would help me. I could then get other things greenlit. I don't even think him being able to use that juice as a leading man was at the forefront of his mind. And then putting DeVito in it was like, oh, here's my buddy. You know, he's now on taxi. I want to help him make that TV to movies leap. And it's another weird one where it's like watching this and Jewel of the Nile back to back. It is wild how it's like Jewel of the Nile. DeVito's the third name over the poster.

He's in it almost as much as the two of them. He becomes an equal lead. Like it was just so clear that like, oh, America can't get enough of Danny DeVito. Oh, I couldn't get enough at 11. I thought it was the funniest thing in this movie. And the one, so this, watching this movie, it's an example of where like,

I realized how many times I watched it as a kid because you start to like predict the lines and predict the beats. And one of those was absolutely DeVito running down that hill, shooting backwards, like over the lines and predict the beats and and one of those was absolutely devito running down that hill shooting backwards like over yes it's just like like i just ate that up as a kid it was the funniest thing i'd ever seen so it's also crazy that there are three movies where the above the title billing is michael douglas yes uh kathleen turner danny devito and you know two of them are these two movies. So that makes sense.

But then they're just like, let's do it all again, guys, for a completely unrelated movie. And DeVito's directing now. I mean, The War of the Roses is a good movie. Well, it speaks to the chemistry that Adam was talking about that Douglas and Turner do have. And I think, you know, we've talked about the references here, Indiana Jones being the most obvious, but you could even look at It Happened One Night, right? The Frank Capra road trip screwball comedy, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert. I mean, it's not in that league at all, but you can see like maybe that's what they're going for. And there are exchanges between Douglas

and Turner where they almost get there. You know, they do have that repartee. So you could see why they would continue to work together. There's that very classical sort of oil and water dynamic here where you're just like, how could these two people possibly end up together by the end of this movie? Which is very, you know, it happens one night. I mean, when they talk about the feeding frenzy that this script caused when it went out on the market, it was like everyone went, oh, my God, she's kind of created a new subgenre. Like she's put a couple things together that no one's ever synthesized before. And they talk so much.

I mean, you're talking about the moments where it gets sort of overly crude and sexual. intellectual they're talking about how unconventional this movie seemed at the time when the main source of comedy was still in the shadow of like animal house and mel brooks you know that blazing cells animal house and and i'm ghostbusters i guess is the same year as this but like that the national lampoon sensibility you know was still like the dominating comedic force it was very sexual it was very anarchic and this movie is very classical in its comedy you know the devito stuff feels like bugs bunny and the two of them as you said feel like it could be like hepburn and tracy or whatever and the idea that it was like oh this thing has actual action set pieces. It has actual kind of classical comedy in it. And it works as a romantic story. And you're putting in this sort of adventure patina that just

worked really well with Indiana Jones. People were just like, this is everything. She's found out how to put everything that people like into one movie that should work for everybody. Yeah. And DeVito, you know, with the Bugs Bunny connotation, that's a perfect match for Zemeckis, right? Because I think that's what he does bring here that's good is the Looney Tunes sensibility, the Roger Rabbit sensibility. I think, Griffin, I think you called it zip. And this movie has that. It has farce and it has chaos, but it's always just on the edge of teetering over. But Zemeckis keeps it in control.

It's always just on the edge of teetering over, but Zemeckis keeps it in control. Even a little moment like DeVito's little car pulling that U-turn on the muddy jungle road, it's bouncing around like this yellow balloon. And it's this wonderful cartoonish throwaway moment that, you know, as a kid and even now it makes you giggle. It captures DeVito's character. And that is definitely, that's the sort of stuff that Zemeckis brought for me is just that good cartoonish vibe and zip as you said I love it when someone has a car that reflects them you know what I mean like I just love it when like a car pulls up and I'm

like Danny DeVito should be driving this car and then he like gets out of the car I'm like perfect not only is that the car he owns but he should be the hood ornament like there should be a little chrome devito at the top of it i'm you know i'm thinking of also of like pesci and the lethal weapon movies like what are other movies where they were like a thing yeah a thing you want is like a third sort of yes you know spicy comedy guy ish like you know to sort of like tag along like it's very i think of it as very 80s 90s the jump for how much they centered devito in jewel of the nile is very similar to what they do with pesci in lethal weapon where it's like oh you like this in small doses he's everywhere like half of the nile right half of jewel of the nile is uh kathleen

turner's being held hostage and it's douglas and devito together like it's not even devito chasing them it's the two of them are the buddy picture yeah based on this you can't imagine that devito would be a key part of any sequel no i mean there's no reason based on his character you might just think like right oh that's the end of him right and like what that was a nice little appearance by danny devito and that's i mean there are ostensibly like four antagonist characters of his size not physically but in real estate in the movie uh in this film he doesn't have a larger role than any of them he just does more with his screen time it's

just that thing where it's like well and he's he's inherently funny that's what it is he's the one he's on the same plane as amicus right because i i was surprised knowing how much he became like the third guy above the title in the second movie and And I mean, he was in this movie, but he's sort of overbilled, uh, knowing how much this sort of like launched his career to the next level. I assumed he was going to be the third lead and he's not in a ton of it. It's just that every time he's on screen, he's,

he's so capturing the energy of the movie and his little body. It's just, we've talked about it, but it is just crazy that he had a 10-year run as both a bankable leading man in hollywood and like a sort of surprisingly like talented director of dramas like at the same time yes like yeah and that like that you would bill him over michelle pfeiffer in batman returns and david like he's second build about you're forgetting the third step of that argument which is he also became a major producer

i think just two but like yes just fiction and aaron brockovich right a good indie ish producer it's true like it's just the guy from taxi like i and i love danny devito i want to be clear like i have nothing but respect for and and admiration for danny devito but uh just like they would make movies where like what's the premise well it's like oh well danny devito's a jerk like that's the premise of the movie like other people's money devito's a single father fine green light like jack the bear like that's what's so wild is you're like okay great New York theater actor. This guy screams New York like you know Soho basement playhouse energy. You could see how he'd pop there. Him getting onto something like Taxi. Dream. Tailor made for him but it

feels like man this is this guy got so lucky that this part existed there are not many sitcoms in which he would fit into properly this is a perfect role for him and then he gets something like romancing the stone and you're like well very lucky very lucky that michael douglas is his good friend they're not a lot of movies you could imagine dane devito fitting into but this role is perfect for him and then shortly after this they're just like no data feels a movie star we build vehicles around danny devito griffin the jack the bear reference made this whole night worth it jack the bear isn't that wild that that movie exists it is that one's a wild one that's a that's marshall herskivitz right it's a it's good other guy his partner right yes but it's like you look at i

was just running through all the devito vehicles because this is still the period where it's like he's and danny devito he's won a couple uh emmys you know he's a tv star you throw him in for a couple scenes to be funny this is the one that i think kind of pushes him over the edge and then you have like wise guys the joe piscopo, Danny DeVito, two-hander directed by Brian De Palma. You have twins obviously is just like humongous. Well, he had,

yeah, he had some of those big comedies. Wasn't other people's money. I feel like that's later. Yeah. That's the one right after this. There you go. Yeah. That's his first, I'm first build. It's a Danny De is the one right after there you go yeah that's his first i'm

first build it's a denny devito movie yeah which is a zucker abraham zucker joint you know that's huge tin men and you know but also he starts directing like he does throw obama from the train in 87 uh you know war of the roses in 89 like and both of those are huge hits they're like incredibly dark violent comedies that are huge hits they're like incredibly dark violent comedies that are both huge mainstream hits like when he made hafa he's on the poster of hafa have you seen the poster like it's nicholson dafito a daniel dafito smoking over his shoulder yes it's really he really should have been in the irishman now in retrospect i wish he should have been oh god wish that's the only thing now is like i still love danny devito and i love that he has like a 150 episode run in you know it's always sunny as this like eighth you know thing in his

career like this new wave but i would like to see him do more like weird kind of dark character stuff with serious directors which i feel like he used to do more of like you know he'd pop up in like heist or something cool like that it it feels like devito only really shows up for burton now and then other than that it's like he's got his always sunny gig and he does very lucrative voiceover work anytime there's a cartoon character that people think looks like Danny DeVito, he's like, yeah, fine, I'll be the Lorax. And otherwise, right, you wish he was doing,

even though some of these are smaller roles than other, but you wish he was doing Heist, you wish he was doing The Rainmaker, you wish he was doing Virgin Suicides. You wish he was doing all of these things. He's great in The Rainmaker. I forgot about The Rainmaker. That's a good 90s DeVito.

I also, I wish he directed more. I like all of his movies other than duplex you know and i think he did a thing like when we talked about lucky numbers on this show we talked about like how anytime hollywood tries to do a big shiny very dark comedy with movie stars it bombs and pretty much those devito movies are the only exception he also entered in scalia retire bitch one of the one of the greatest tweets of all time and drinking hungover from limoncello on the view which is also one of the best performances of all time he's got a lot a lot of feathers in his cat that's all i'm saying range he's a renaissance man and that's another day devito vehicle renaissance man wow oh man romancing the stone we haven't really talked the plot that much i guess there's not like a lot to worry about on that front i'm trying to think of other stuff we need to touch on

it's actually i think we were saying how it was it was convoluted before but it's actually pretty straightforward you know it's very straightforward it's just that every twist is a you always have to be like okay sure yeah right like it has that cartoon short element where everything keeps getting ratcheted up right right well i got i got a question and this is kind of a here's a bad nostalgia bell at rung for me i was anyone else who saw this if you saw this when you were young, remember the hysteria about the country of Colombia that existed in the 80s and how this totally fed into it? I think this was part of the whole war on drugs thing going on because Colombia here is, you know, it's basically drugs and danger, right? That's all we're getting here. There's violent, swarthy men and backwards peasants.

But other than that, it's a place of drugs and danger. That's why they didn't shoot there, Josh. Exactly. Too dangerous. It's dripping with the xenophobia. And I can't decide. I want to spend a little time on Alfonso Arou as the drug kingpin in the country who is the fanboy of Joan Wilder, right? Has all her books.

I can't decide if he's undercutting the xenophobia or feeding into it. I think his scenes are hilarious. I think he's undercutting it, but it's a razor thin line. Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. It's also interesting, like, like jewel of the nile goes full fictional country it's just like really made up i think maybe even unnamed country in africa and that one is about like religious leaders and dictators it's not about like smuggling in the same kind of way the weird twist of that movie is that Jewel of the Nile is,

as Beanie Feldstein would say, the titular role. They think that they're trying to get another big, brightly colored rock. And in fact, the thing they're trying to get is a spiritual leader. It's a guy whose name is Jewel.

Bad movie. This is coming back to me now as you describe it. But it's that weird thing where it feels like, this is coming back to me now as you describe it but it's that weird thing where it feels like and that makes sense to me now i mean now that you're putting in the context of like you know 80s sort of like latin america drug running xenophobia that's where all the problems were coming from right it wasn't us in the u.s no right like jewel denal feels a lot less specific and also feels more offensive in its own way but i can see them like over correcting in two directions and somehow making things worse

how'd you like the ellen uh sylvestri score you know some good 80s saxon synth going there it's great score this is the first collaboration with Zemeckis, right? Yeah, it is. He's like a lifer then after that, right? He just keeps working with them. This is also the first Dean Cundey Zemeckis movie. And they just roll over. He takes Cundey and Zemeckis, and sorry, Silvestri,

with him to Back to the Future the next year. It's another thing that you totally feel missing from Jewel of the Nile. And it shows just kind of how lucky Zemeckis was with all the elements he was given on this movie. Well, there is that beautiful shot. I joked about the dance scene, but it ends with that beautiful shot of them

sort of coming together. The music slows down. You get the fireworks behind them. And as I'm describing it, it sounds like the cheesiest thing in movie history, but there's something really elegant about it when you see it on the screen. And that's an important moment, right? Going back to how she perceives Douglas's character and how he plays that part. Because we know he's made the choice at that point to betray her, yet it's also the moment where she is thinking she maybe has

found the guy. Now, you malign Michael Douglas' dancing there, Josh. Oh, it's painful to watch. Maybe rightfully so. But I noticed watching it last night that there's something just slightly off about it, and it's not his dance moves. It's the fact that you see him interacting with Joan and talking while other people are moving around them and there's other noise, but you're not hearing anything they're saying. It just, there was something about it that I was like, well, what's going on here? And then I read, I read some articles like 15 facts about romancing the stone and this completely made sense. That was all just caught by the DP stolen moments. That was, that was Michael Douglas just dancing between takes with,

with Kathleen Turner and other cast members. And he only found out later. So that's why they're not using any of the audio. They're not using any of the audio. That's exactly right. You beat me to it. So, so they,

they, they just saw and said, please don't do that while I'm filming. Douglas found out later that he was on camera the whole time and they ended up, they ended up using it. And I think my mom and other boomer women swooned josh so i don't care what you think yeah it does speak to just how well cast the the two of them and and further davido are in this movie that it's like they're just so fully giving the right energy that you can

shoot them unawares and it's still workable footage, you know? Yeah, they're just great together. And another like Turner moment that I love is when they're in the car, DeVito's car, right? Is it DeVito's car floating down the river at that point? And she's trying to steer it, right? Even though, again, is a Zemeckis suggestion, a Turner improvisation or something in the script. But just a great touch that is sort of cartoonish and screwball in the moment that is supposed to be also like a very serious action moment. Right. And she talked about how hard she fought for this role because post body heat, they thought she was too sexy for this. They were like, well, the whole premise of the movie is this woman should seem unconventional in this environment uh they're not gonna buy you and she

had to like convince them to let her do a screen test with her hair up with no makeup you know with a pencil in her mouth like doing essentially all the stuff at the opening of the movie. A cat lady. Yeah. And you feel like she has this energy in this performance from getting to show a different side of her. I mean, you can just only imagine her being like a woman having this big, highly sexualized breakout role, wanting so hard to work against getting pigeonholed, wanting to make sure that she can show that kind of range. Why she'd bristle at being positioned into that role again. Right. And when the movie starts out, even though you know Kathleen Turner and you know what she can play, you still go, I can't believe at the end of this movie she's going to be swinging over a ravine. You know?

Like, she does sell you on. It doesn't feel like this character's capable of making that journey, but she is, and it's very satisfying to watch. I mean, I feel like we've talked through a lot of the plot in sort of circuitous way, talking through all these elements, but you go from that cold open,

which is like one of those moments where I went, oh, right, this is a Zemeckis movie. Like, there's just a skill and a craft to the way he's doing that homage, the sort of Western romance homage at the beginning, even down to just like, I'm like, he got the colors right. He got the lighting right. This feels like you're watching a John Ford movie. The guy's enough of a nerd that he really didn't want to just go like, this is a parody of this type of thing. I'm going to very specifically emulate the visual language of the type of book she's writing.

If it were translated into a movie, it was a little bit like, uh, once upon a time in the West, I think too, in terms of the character, you know, Claudia Cardinal's terrorized Mrs. McBain. Um, that's kind of who that character is playing there. This woman who's being threatened and is going to try to take things in her own hands. And he's a guy who loves classic Western so much. That's the thing that he and Gale and Spielberg bonded over. He rammed Back to the Future into becoming a Western at the end of the franchise, even though there was no reason for it to go to that direction. So you feel that excitement there.

And then the tonal jump from that to Kathleen Turner and her home is so good. And like just all the shit with her, like writing the notes to remind herself of all the basic life things she has to do is such good, concise characterization. And also felt like it hit way too close to home in lockdown where i feel like every day i try to do something in my apartment i have to remind myself oh right you were supposed to take care of this yesterday your sink isn't

working because you forgot to buy a wrench i've gotten very into to-do lists as well and i will admit yes i have to because i just walk around my apartment and i have to like note like what are the five things i need the next time i leave when i like prepare myself like ernest shackleton to brave the outdoors what are the five things i need to get from duane reed and when i come home and i realize i forgot one of them it feels like a massive failure um but the movie moves so fast after that i mean you have the good setup with her and holland taylor where you just essentially say exactly what's going on in this character you know she feels a little bit trapped in her success uh well and you also see like this need for a man is being foisted upon her too right because society is like what's the problem right she's picking out all the

men at the bar which ones are acceptable her neighbor in her building the question she you know i what does she say something like i'm still holding out hope for you so not only do you need a man but time is running out right so right um but you have i mean i feel like she gets the call from her sister within the first 15 minutes right yeah that sounds right if not like 10 very quick yeah this is not a long movie this is like an hour 45 minute like yeah but you get the stakes of the movie which are her sister i like how how sort of like flippantly they explain like well you know this honeymoon she went on her husband just died i mean geez louise wait why is she calling and how The fact he was cut up. That the husband showed up dead. Right, was butchered.

They just leave that. He's just sort of like, c'est la vie. I mean, I don't know. Bad trip. I think we've established it's Columbia. It's Columbia, right. The scariest place on earth. But yes, you know, she knows her sister is still overseas, that her husband's been chopped into a million pieces.

But now she gets the call that she's gotten caught up in something worse and she's being held hostage and she has to go bring the map to her sister. And the movie, I mean, it is like a Looney Tunes thing. The whole sort of like main story is put in a motion because she gets on the wrong bus when the signs are turning the wrong direction. Someone points the wrong way,

which is like Bugs Bunny. Like I took the wrong turn at Albuquerque shit like it's very like so by chance you know these three things sort of like comically going wrong at one moment put her the wrong bus which crashes into the wrong car which gets her set up with the wrong guy and the thing that i was so impressed with. And it's like this weird thing watching, seeing this movie so late after seeing so many films that were influenced by this movie and are trying to replicate this movie,

you realize the things that they get wrong that this movie got right in a way where you're like, why wasn't everyone ripping them off more closely? But the fact that they sort of start to warm up to each other under an hour in like i feel like that scene in the plane is like 50 minutes in and the scene where they sleep together is like a little over an hour in and i feel like most movies like this wait until an hour and 45 minutes for them to realize they like each other then they

have one final fight they break up and they get back together at the right that's why i love it i love that they sleep together halfway through and but they're like he's only definitely decided to stop being an asshole right at the end of the movie or close they can still bicker but kind of be into each other and i feel like so many movies mess it up where they're like, no, they need to keep on fighting 90% of the running time, like tooth and nail, which at a certain point just becomes unpleasant to watch. Like you're just like, well, they're never going to like each other. There's not enough of a mixture. Like the classic screwball comedies, the detest was always mixed with the attraction. And then the mixture changed as the movie went on. And then the ones that get it wrong, they either detest each other or they're attracted.

It's A or B, right? There's no tension. Yeah, there's no tension. Right. This gets the classical push and pull. And it's nice, as you said, David, just have them sleep together an hour in. That's not the end of their conflicts. New conflicts will arise.

Like, don't set that up like it's the final challenge final challenge you know the thing that will solve their relationship forever it's just not a movie i appreciate that about it like especially since it's michael douglas and kathleen turner who are these stars i associate with like 80s steaminess like in all of its glory right there's they're sweaty sex actors yeah it's great they like being sweaty and having sex you brought up the and i i know we shouldn't scrutinize the script too much here but when you were talking about getting on the wrong buses and stuff i do remember watching it and thinking okay even early on they've set up this zolo as if he's like the baddest most evil guy on the planet he's the butcher he's this terrible presence he takes out the super why why does he get on the bus and go

like 12 hours into the countryside when he could have literally just i mean he could have at any moment when they got off the plane just grabbed grabbed her, gotten whatever he wanted, and there wouldn't be a movie. Like, you have that dumb luck moment that it's like, oh, she's naive. What a coincidence. The person she asked to help her figure out what bus to get on

is the guy who's been trying to hunt her. Okay, I'll give you that movie contrivance. That's how movies work. The moment that doesn't make sense is that Zola's result is like, what I want is for her to get on this wrong bus. I'll get on the bus with her and then I'll kill her maybe tomorrow. Especially when he has a militia at his disposal.

Yes. It's not like he has to be at work covertly here. I will say he gets his whole arm bitten off. And this is, this movie is rated PG because it's, it's not there. PG 13 is maybe doesn't even exist yet. Yeah.

That strikes me as one of those classic when you're a kid, like, I can't believe I just saw that moment. Oh, I think the crocodiles are probably 65% of the reason I love this movie when I was a kid. And of course it's, it's like, this is another reference point for it, right?

Is the bond. Which bond is it? Live and let die. That has him jumping on the crocodiles. So just that the crocodiles or the alligators, whatever they are, are planted early on. You know somebody's hand is going at some point. And as a kid, you're just waiting for that moment. It is a wild thing. is right it's weirdly violent it's weirdly sexual for a movie that it doesn't necessarily warrant an r it would be a pg-13 but you're used to these movies being a little more chased and i think a little more uh heightened and a little more hermetic and stylized as much as Zemeckis has that zip I think he really keeps his eye on the ball with these two characters remaining flawed human beings and not movie archetypes

but yeah yeah I mean that this is you know, they have their meet cute, which is two vehicles crashing into one another after she gets shot at a bunch of times. And then the deal is set. And like talking about him being a little pathetic, I love how quickly he comes down in the negotiation. Like him finally settling for, what is it, $275 in traveler's checks? $375 in traveler's checks. $375, yes. Yeah. Right, he doesn't take a lady to a phone booth for less than $500.

And Josh, you were talking about the moments that deflate him as a man or as this kind of masculine archetype. I mean, how about the fact that they meet because the bus hits his vehicle and it's carrying birds? I mean, it's just like— He's a bird smuggler. He's into birds. It's pretty pathetic. It's not as if he's out there, like, you know, living off the land and he's, you know, he's, it's, he's trying to, he's trying to get by and he's got a really stupid scheme to try

to, to try to survive basically. He has figured out that people pay too much money for certain birds. Well, and that's where she starts to fall for him is when he shows that he's actually kind of interested in these birds, right? He's describing the differences in the birds and he's showing like, I guess you could see that as being unmanly, right? A man would just grab the bird from the sky and shove it in his pocket. He wouldn't care what kind of bird it is. But here's this guy trying to explain the differences between different birds.

And that's where she starts to open up to the possibility. There's a lighter touch with him and not to repeat myself, but it's also that he is unfulfilled. I think in that moment when he explains to her that this isn't what he set out to do in life, it's what he landed at. But as a byproduct of this dream of living some grander life life finding some sort of adventure for himself that's the moment she immediately relates to it's like i literally traffic and fantasy i sit down and write the types of scenarios that you tried to live i get that sense of disappointment with where you ended up even if your life is more exciting than mine right now but it just it's so nice that it doesn't like I feel like I've talked about, especially in comedies with like popular,

you know, mainstream entertainment films. I feel like so often their success or failure is defined by how well they are able to pace themselves and not feel like you're stalling. Because any movie, really, the conflict, there's a way the conflict could be resolved in 10 minutes, right? Like every movie has to create obstructions preventing its characters from getting to the end of the movie too early. And I think when those things are done artfully, that's when

films are really engaging, when you actually buy into the stakes and it doesn't feel like, God, come on, she would never make that decision. What are the odds of that happening on this day? And to that point, it's like, you understand the amount of space they have to traverse, you understand the struggles. But the bigger thing is, they move through the stages of their relationship and their courtship so quickly because it's like negotiation then it's the mudslide that's sort of their low point literally down at the bottom of a mudslide him between her legs being crass then like there's a little more fighting and then within 10 minutes they're in the plane getting vulnerable with each

other i mean it happens within 20 minutes of them meeting the scene where they start to bond. You know, they sleep together 10 minutes after that. I mean, it helps that as they're trekking through the steps that you can follow of who's after them, where do they need to get, what do they need to locate? Their relationship is moving very linearly and logically and isn't stalling at all. Yeah. And for the most part, too, other than that scene in the the fuselage of the plane or whatever, they it's in their actions. It's in it's in the moments, the the way they the way they look at each other. Sometimes it's the way, you know, someone says something that makes the the other person

react a certain way. But it's not like they're having these deep conversations. It's it's all in their behavior. It's behavioral yeah yeah which is just good writing and you have two great movie stars who are up to that task right and now this is the point where you have like everyone kind of circling in on them i mean i guess the the character i'm forgetting his name now but the one who's such a big fan of hers that's's really like the midpoint of the movie. Juan Alfonso Roró.

That joke works on me so well, even though it's so silly. Just like, I read you those stories at nighttime and everyone's like, Juanita! It's just so ridiculous. It's also, it's a thing I think Joel Van Al gets really wrong is they make it that she's like a humongous author. That she's like world renowned.

That people are constantly recognizing her from her books. And the beauty of that joke is that like you get at the beginning in the Holland Taylor conversation. She's successful. People want her books. They sell well. But no one else, the rest of the movie knows her by name. No one else presents the rest of the movie knows her by name no one else presents themselves as a fan and at that point you're so far past thinking about her career that the idea that

one guy is like fanatical about her work and it happens to be this guy right when she's on the other end of a barrel of a gun you know like at the right moment this guy not only is such a big fan but can convey to everyone else in the town you don't know like this is joan wilder town we live and die by joan wilder right well and that's also where douglas starts to take her seriously as something other than a mark right so so it's it does that work as well as being very funny right maybe he's not just romancing the stone because they have the stone at that point or do they get it afterwards no they don't yeah right after this is that's when they're still looking to for a vehicle like you know yeah but it's also i mean this was not an expensive what it had a budget of 10 million dollars like

this is not like being told on the epic scale of raiders of the lost ark but i that i appreciate that simplicity too like there's not a lot of puzzles for them here like they're not being led on some merry treasure hunt where they have to you know figure out six different things like you know they find the stone we get there by accident yeah right the movie is very economical it's like oh there's that thing on the map i guess we're here right no that's a good point david it has to be because they're chumps like if if they had to do too much puzzle solving you would it would strain credibility you'd be like why are they suddenly so good at this yep you're right neither of them are made for this and and truly the major conflict of the movie remains she took a bus several hours in the wrong direction the real conflict of this movie is that she should have been able to get from the airport to her sister in under an hour and she went too far in the other direction and now she has to

undo that that's the main conflict devito does basically nothing except when they get the stone snatches it from them and then five seconds later they're like get that back and that's it like that's it his entire arc right devito just keeps on going like i'm getting close i'm getting close and then he finally gets them and he fucks it up within 30 seconds yeah and like rolls down a hill and it's great it's so good another great bit is when he's left behind on the boat you know for for no reason at the very end yeah soon i'll come back very soon. So good. The moment for me that just killed me is the, the bit, the physical bit.

And Zemeckis is such like, he's got that childish, like love of like slapstick comedy and everything. He knows just to like, let these things play out and master shots that he doesn't cut the coverage too much. He lets like these multiple actors in this incredible terrain behave in real time in real unbroken takes but that bit where devito's on the phone and he notices the wanted poster yeah and he's trying to pull the poster down and it's like devito is has always been so smart at knowing his size and

knowing how much funnier certain things are because of his relation to everything else around him objects and space and time and other people like any two shot with Danny DeVito is funny because it's not how any other two shot with two adults is framed but that bit where it's just like he's on the phone he's keeping up his angry energy it's like classic Louis De Palma stuff and he's trying to figure out like how to like classic louis de palma stuff and then he's trying to figure out like how to get up onto the chair how to switch over to the side how to jump onto the counter and then when he just does that perfect fall where like his feet go above his head and he falls out of frame it's just he's he's inherently funny it's not just that he looks like

danny devito it's that he's a very skilled actor and he understands how to use being Danny DeVito as like an instrument and and I was watching I mean all these interviews with him where he was like so many of the moments that people told me were funny like I didn't even realize like the thing you were saying Josh about uh him running away from the car shooting behind him he was like I was trying to play that as straight as possible. I just wasn't thinking about the fact that it would look funny. Cause I'm the one doing it. Well, and why does it look funny to your point?

Griffin is because Zemeckis shoots it in like wide shot. So we see, we see the space all around him. Like there's not really an immediate threat yet. He's still firing over his head in desperation it's it's so funny uh talking about how much they like america just had devito fever at the time the trailer for this movie is devito in an apartment calling ira saying like i got a real big case there's a stone you see and the whole trailer is footage shot just for the trailer of DeVito

and a set they constructed just for the trailer. He's a great pitch man. Narrating. Right. And like going like, there's this guy, you see, and this woman, real sad. Like he's like listing all the things. The trailer is like 60 seconds and he's like, can't talk. Gotta leave right now.

He hangs up the phone. He looks at the camera and he says, and I'm taking you with me. And he points at the audience and it just says Romancing the Stone and the movie was a huge hit. Of course, it's a good trailer. It's just all DeVito. Guess what?

Trailer for Jewel of the Nile, exactly the same. Trailer for Jewel of the Nile, him walking up to a phone booth going, hey, Ira, I got a whole new case. This time it's even bigger than that stone hey if it ain't broke don't fix it it's unbelievable but in relation to david as you said he he's a threat at a distance shows up steals the stone for them they're like no you're little we're taking it back and he's pretty much gone yep yeah but it's like la confidential a favorite movie of mine like yeah that movie begins with with danny devito going like so here's the

deal la like the big city they're building highways like he's laying out like danny devito being used as a a narrator or an entree to a story is an underrated cinematic device that should be revived i i feel like 10 years ago or maybe even more he announced he was going to star in and direct a movie about crazy eddie the like blowout discount electronics guy who was the first of course like i think i'm insane i'm giving these things away and it's like that's exactly what I want to see. That's the exact movie I want in the world. Is DeVito to camera just screaming about toaster ovens. All right. Unless there's anything else we should,

we should play the box office game. It's a good box office game. I will say. I mean, we sort of talked about this. We, we got there earlier talking about this stuff out of order but yeah once they get the stone you pretty quickly get to that sort

of final showdown where everyone comes into place at once the standoff with the crocodiles which is such a good like new physical threat for them and the calculation of him in the moment, it's seeming like he's doing the selfless thing. He's proving that he's not actually a scumbag because he would rather lose the stone and save her life than give it to these guys. That crocodile is not going to be able to digest the stone. He'll get it back. He'll like surround this guy as he does. And, you know, he thinks he can leave her and that she's going to be okay on her own. I read that as a more noble choice, actually. I think it's both. Yeah.

I think it's both. I do. I mean, you think it's 100% sincere? Yeah. I mean, because they show that the crocodile is like jumping into the bay. You know, the implication to me is it's free. It's wild. They escaped its enclosure.

Yeah, but they do keep cutting back to the crocodile always to let us know that he's keeping an eye on it. Like he's always watching it. Right. And also, we know this guy loves boats. Like that's the other thing he's boat crazy he's so crazy about boats he drives one down in new york city street at the end of the movie but i mean that's pretty just for a second though i mean was anyone else struck by the absurdity again of a crocodile is in the bay and he just jumps in he's like i'm just getting

in the water yeah right right yeah i mean that's the indiana jones move right that's that's the like no matter how insane this situation i've got it covered i mean i don't know i'd come up with a plan but i'm not just jumping in especially it just ate a person's hand like this is not a chill crocodile yeah i do like that that's the douglas thing though of just like whether or not it's strategic at that point in time or an idea he comes to later i do like that he recognizes i'm not a moron i'm not gonna go after the crocodile now wait for the crocodile to poop you know like you can't you can't stick your hand on a crocodile's throat it's a bad idea no um but the end of this movie i just think is so genuinely sweet i mean they get there pretty fast but like goes back to new york she's achieved the height of success which is of course being cat

called on the street by random strangers now she's finally gotten her life in balance well people are wolf whistling at her but also it's it's that before she's like totally surrounded she can't get she can't get by one person and assert herself right at the end she's in complete control it's the assertion that is very true yes and she's very comfortable in her own skin and all of that she you know she's figured out a new book she's got new inspiration in her life uh but douglas showing up with the boat just like totally disarmed me uh i i just think it's so uh it's there's something so visually striking about it boots yes the crocodile boots are good the boots a very nice touch but there's something so like romantic in sort of a fairy tale way about that final shot of just like what is it madison avenue with the boat just driving down it

off until the distance absolutely why not i mean everything everything has happened the way it should in terms of the arc of joan wilder but that she gets the payoff too at the end she finally gets to live out the fantasy they both get fulfillment right i mean that's that's that's what hollywood endings are made of uh i'm just i'm just seeing go ahead griffin sorry i just wanted to note i wanted to note that they considered remaking this with katherine heigl and taylor kitch thank you or gerard butler gerard butler i saw that right that's the big one that's like the after ugly truth they were like we got to just throw you guys into a romancing the stone remake because

david has contended before in this podcast that katherine heigl and gerard butler together and separately might have killed the romantic comedy in america like they're maybe the two people you could put the blame at and the idea of just like a 2008 2009 romancing the stones reboot with the two of them just sounds like the absolute worst idea and misunderstanding of what works in this movie. If I could just do two other things very quickly before we get to the box office game, David. One, tiny merchandise spotlight that I just found kind of charming. They released novelizations of both of these movies, which most movies in the 80s got novelizations. Sure, classic.

Even the ones you imagine would not have gotten novelizations they had both of them credited to joan wilder which i think is cool nice yeah that is clever right yes i like that and i believe they tried to write them sort of in the style of the types of books that she would have written that's the same plots um the second one uh despite being sort of so rushed, I mean, they came out the next year. Zemeckis, talk about a sliding door scenario. You have to imagine there's a part of him or a part of most filmmakers who would be tempted by the prospect of, it's a go picture. You just made a hit. Fox wants a sequel. The stars are back. It's an easy paycheck to just come back for the second one

and instead he goes off and makes back to the future which was an incredibly wise decision but it goes back to what you said at the start you know if he was if he would the end game was back to the future always positioned him to do it so it was kind of you know kind of a no-brainer but he couldn't even took it he took the gig yes no he did not he couldn't be tempted right i feel like a lot of people get laid sure sort of uh astray if they have one hit like this they start to question well but should i make a move versus right um which he didn't do uh and jewel the nile ended up avali actually making more than romancing the stone it was a slightly bigger hit, but they never made the third one largely because it just feels like it killed enthusiasm for it.

It's that rare case of in the past, if it didn't feel like the desire was there, studios would not cram a fifth entry down audiences' throats. They would just sort of throw their hands up. At one point, i think in the early 2000s or the late 90s they almost did slightly less i just want to correct you okay i'm sorry yeah but it made just about the same amount yeah yeah um in the late 90s they almost did a third movie that was the two of them and their kids and then in the early 2000s there there was a rumor that Douglas wanted to do a third one, but with Catherine Zeta-Jones instead of... Right. Bad idea.

Michael. Bad idea. Right. So, like, very happy neither of those happened. Very happy the Catherine Heigl-Gerard Butler one didn't happen. But I was like, it's still kind of curious they wouldn't push the third one up a hill. And then I read some of the anecdotes about the making of Jewel of the Nile. If I could just speed run through these, okay?

So immediately they're like, bring back Diane Thomas. Diane Thomas has gotten an overall deal at Amblin. Douglas says we can't afford her. Kathleen Turner resents the fact that they don't get Diane Thomas. So Kathleen Turner tries to quit the movie when they deliver the script

that was written by two other guys. Fox then threatens to sue Kathleen Turner for $25 million. Douglas intercepts and is like, please, please, please, I'll stop her from quitting. Don't sue her. Drop the suit. Goes to Diane Thomas, says, can you please come on and take a pass at the script? I need you to fix this. Just two weeks, whatever you can do. So she comes on and works the script for two weeks. He's like,'t pay you your quote so as a reward he buys her the newest top of the line porsche that porsche is what she dies in several months later yeah like curse number one okay then curse number two uh where is this here approximately two weeks before principal

photography began, an aircraft carrying Richard Dawking, production designer, and Brian Coates, production manager, crashed during location scouting over the countryside of Morocco, killing all on board. So you have three key creative people who die right before the movie, right? I think she dies a month before it comes out,

but she had a much younger boyfriend who was a professional stunt driver, Diane Thomas. And he wanted to show off in the car that Michael Douglas had bought her for rewriting this movie. And that's how she died. And then there's this story here. Let me just find this. Um, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Uh, I can't find this anecdote here, but, um, oh, here we go. Filming in North Africa was dogged with problems from unbearable 100 degree Fahrenheit heat to problems with the local crew. But the most troubling concern was that the director, Louis Teague, who after this goes on to make Collision Course, the Jay Leno, Pat Morita buddy comedy that essentially kills his career and has just worked in TV for the rest of his life after that, showed that he was not up to the task of helming an action film. After one massive night scene that was hours in setup, cast and crew in place, it was only then that someone noticed that there was no film in the cameras.

As producer, Michael Douglas exploded. The whole debacle had to be refilmed another day only after the raw stock was finally located uh equipment was being held up by customs bribes were paid to local government i completely understand why they didn't make another one after that yeah they were probably just like forget it it's cursed this is a bad idea and also douglas is such a big star at that point at that point he doesn't want to do it he's like this is a young man's game and all three of them like proceed to have huge uh decades like the latter half of the 80s for turner devito and douglas are all three humongous okay guys we're

playing the box office game we're gonna we're gonna guess the movies that came out the weekend this movie came out which is march 30th 1984 this movie opened at number four so it's sort of like a long big sleepery kind of movie like it wasn't a movie that opened big and you know um and this yeah this is march it played for september the nile march is jewel the niles december 85 yeah yeah yeah so quick all right okay number one of the box office number one is a the it's a comedy it's the start of a franchise is a police academy it is well done academy nice you guys you guys see police academy in theaters you have oh yes yeah watched it constantly yeah i think that was a vhs for me right right right um yeah police academy it's second week i don't know what's it gonna go on to make it made 80 million bucks i mean it was a huge hit right like you know

probably humongous in the top five of that year right oh yeah humongous uh definitely in the top five of that year, right? Oh, yeah. Humongous. Definitely in the top five. I just found out recently that the Naked Gun movies were only called the Naked Gun because of Police Academy. Because they were adapting or continuing the Police Squad TV show, and they didn't want to use the title Police Squad because they were like, Police Academy just has that shit on lock.

We can't be a different comedy with police in the title right uh all right number two is a adventure film funny that it's opening the same week as this more of a prestige adventure movie got an oscar nomination graystoke legend tozan yes jesus oh man and we and we're the ones doing an 8 from 84 series on our show this year and we're dying here better to not bring that up Adam I have never seen Graystroke colon the Legend of Tarzan comma Lord of the

Apes have you guys seen this film with I remember it being on I remember never being intrigued enough to keep watching it has that Ralph Richardson that's sort of like you know the kind of final final right final role oscar nomination that's a big rick baker breakthrough and then the other big thing i feel like that's known about that movie is i think christopher lambert couldn't speak english at all that's one of those movies where you have like a

lead actor who's acting phonetically and uh annie mcdowell they hated her southern accent so much that glenn close dubbed over all of her dialogue really very strange yeah uh all right number three it's another comedy i'm gonna give you very little because you're getting these fast um i'm on fire tonight big star but on his way to stardom still sort of a a juvenile, you know, still like a young comedy star, but he's going to become a big star. Okay, so he's Beverly Hills Cop. It's not Beverly Hills Cop, though. Not Beverly Hills Cop.

That's December. I just wanted to guess something before Griffin got the answer. And Ghostbusters is June. So those are like the two huge comedies of this year. Police Academy is already off the board. Okay, but Juvenile. Is he young?

Is it a young star? No, no. He's probably in his early 20s or whatever. Okay, but Juvenile. Is he young? Is it a young star? No, he's probably in his early 20s or whatever. Maybe a little older than that. Yeah, he's probably close to... He's late 20s. And it's not an SNL guy. No, although he certainly has been on SNL many times. Oh, he's certainly been on SNL many times, you say?

It's Splash. There you go. Ron Howard, Splash. There we go. there we go there we go danzen mandel i will sleep well tonight i have seen so many times uh another vhs type i don't know or whatever was just on cable all the time yes that's one i saw like probably eight times between the ages of five and ten and have not seen since um yeah i haven't seen in years uh romancing stone number four so number five it's a teen movie it was invoked on this podcast tonight uh it's been out for two months it's a huge hit footloose

a lot of great weekend for on-screen dancing. Or not. Those are five pretty well-known movies. It drops off after that. You got Against All Odds, Tank, The Ice Pirates, Children of the Corn, Racing with the Moon. Now we're in somewhat more forgotten mid-80s territory. I don't know. I like that bottom five, David. There's some location in that bottom five.

It's fun. It's a fun bottom five. But yeah, the top- The reason that the moon's kind of an underrated movie, I feel like that never gets discussed. That's a sweet movie. I've never seen it. No, I haven't either.

I watched it. Tell us about it. Trying to watch every single Nicolas Cage movie, but that's like coming of age, Sean Penn's kid from wrong side of the tracks, Elizabeth McGovern like really running hot after ordinary people and then Cage plays like

Penn's like wild loose cannon friend sure yeah of course it looks pretty cute yeah and it's like set in the 40s yeah that's a nice little movie uh yeah so that's it we're done um we did it congratulations to everyone we discussed the

film romancing the stone yes well thank you yeah yeah thank you guys the last for hire zemeckis movie and then after that he's like robert zemeckis you know he's writing his own checks after this yeah this one is oh wow to the future who's this kid and after back to the future it's like you own this town you will own forever here are the keys yeah yeah as he should it is a crazy switch flip considering that back to the future is coming like the yeah that this is yeah this is the one and once again the back to the future like i didn't realize how close together these two movies were like this is march it it isn't an immediate hit it does well but it is somewhat of a sleeper back to the future is july 85 yep right back to the

future is 14 months later or whatever um it's it's pretty well but but he was ready i mean he knew that movie and as you said josh he that was the goal like everything was working towards getting to make that one and And we will talk about it probably for too long next week. Josh, Adam, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks a lot, guys.

Such a big fan and longtime listener. And I met you, Adam, along with our buddy JD at a film spotting meetup in New York like five or six years ago. Five or six years ago.

Yeah. And we had kept in touch vaguely since then. And then you very kindly asked me to be on the Toy Story episode when Josh was unavailable. That was a great show. That was fun. It was a great show. It truly is an honor because I feel like you two guys

are two of the legends of the film podcasting space. And I was listening to your show for years before we had our own show. And it feels like a validation to have things come full circle and have you guys come on and legitimize our stupid show. The honor is all ours, guys.

Little hyperbole, but we'll take it. Yep. So you guys, now that movies are starting to come back into theaters, you're reviewing new releases, which is usually the bread and butter of your show. But most of the summer you've been doing a lot of sort of miniseries, director miniseries or genres or years or careers like that. But is the plan going forward back to new releases or do you have more sort of marathons coming up that you want to tease? Yeah, we've actually, we've been talking about this recently, and I think we're going to try to get back to a consistent schedule of doing two marathons per year, which is where, you know, we talk about five to seven movies,

you know, by a certain actor or a certain director or maybe of a certain genre that these are usually blind spots for us. And so we're two films into an overlooked tours marathon right now that is all about female directors. So we started with Maya Deren and her experimental stuff and Ida Lupino and The Hitchhiker. And then last week on the show, we talked about Daisy's The Czech New Wave, you know, really pioneering film. We have John Dielman ahead. So that I'm looking forward to that. And we'll do that. And we'll do a couple of those, like I said. And then I think this new series we started that kind of taking a page from your book, actually, what we are calling based on a listener suggestion are overviews. I'm going to take a look at a filmography of a director. And Nolan was our first choice because it was a perfect setup to,

as you said, Griffin, have some movies to talk about during this time, getting ready for Tenet. And so we watched all of his films in order and talked about him. And then we got to cap that off with Tenet, but we don't know who's next, but we're going to try to do at least one of those a year as well. So. Awesome. Well, everyone should listen. If you don't already listen to Film Spotting, I don't know why. And you have your Patreon as well, the Film Spotting family, i'm a member of yes and very worth the five i'm a family i'm a member of the blank check family uh as well on patreon and i'll just say that uh our our page would not be as meagerly successful as it is certainly relative to yours if it wasn't for your advice and uh taking the time

to to talk to me about that and what made you guys successful. So I appreciate everything you did for us there. That's very kind of you to say. I appreciate the plug because I'm trying to set up a shadow career as a Patreon. A high paid Patreon consultant is my new, because it doesn't look like I'm ever going to be on set ever again. Anyway, thank you all for being on the show and thank you all for listening and tune in

next week for Back to the Future what will definitely be a very, very normal low-key episode. Please remember to rate, review, subscribe, go to blankcheck, or rather, blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit.

You can go to our new Shopify with merchandise. I think the comedy points have sold out, but we'll be refreshing stuff often, so if something you want to see is out of stock, let us know on social media. We'll bring it back. And also, if you have requests of other things

you'd like to see us selling soon, we're always open to those sorts of suggestions uh go to patreon.com backslash blank check where i think we will now uh be on the alien films right the alien franchise uh that's right absolutely uh slithering around um multiple mouths that's true that is a feature in the Alien films multiple mouths we're just gearing up to that basically so that's a thing to look forward to

yep and as always Michael Douglas is too horny on me very good As always, Michael Douglas is too horny on me. Very good.